Which, according to pundits’ preseason polls, would have been a possible WCSF matchup. We here at Knickerblogger knew that Wiggins would continue to suck ass and 33-year-old LeBron couldn’t carry a bunch of scrubs to 50 wins in the West over 82 games.

The Lakers have a bunch of productive players and then they have Kyle Kuzma, Brandon Ingram and Kentavious Caldwell Pope. They should be patient and if things don’t improve as the year goes along you can try to deal Kuzma and Ingram.

Only watched a couple Laker games, but it doesn’t seem like they should be in panic mode yet. Offence is running okay (or at least as well as you could expect) but they are getting crushed on D. LeBron seems to be coasting at the end of the floor, but given it’s still November why would he be overly exerting himself yet? Chandler should help a little, but he isn’t the solution.

Hoping Knox gets a bit more burn tonight if we are sans Lance and THjr.

I don’t understand the Trae Young hype. We knew he could pass and score. The problem was his efficiency, TOs, and defense. So far his scoring efficiency has surprised me to the upside. I thought his TS% would be more like 50% as a rookie and it’s 53.8% so far, but he can’t defend a lick and is a TO machine.

I don’t have a full appreciation of Bernard as a player. When he was at his peak I was at my peak “partying” years and sort of drifted away from sports for a few years. I wish I watched more of that period.

I know it’s still early in the season, and I know many of us are concerned that we might not be bottom 3 (and remember that flattened odds may indeed weaken Dolan’s Razor for us). But between the Wizards’ game, the Bulls’ game, and this one so far, I’m not so sure we don’t have a legit shot at bottom 3.

Still very downtrodden that we have to endure an entire season of this.

Rebuilds are supposed to be about bottoming out and then slowly adding draft picks and other good players. You get better each year after bottoming out. The Knicks bottomed out to get Porzingis and have gotten worse each year since. We have a few nice pieces to develop due to drafting well, but we have some bad young players getting minutes. I hope KP comes back and looks good. Otherwise this is going to be a painful year without much optimism for next year unless something changes and a couple of players wake up.

@51. It’s a gigantic joke. We are being trolled for sure. The guy left okc to go play with a top 3 team in the league. And we have a team where as soon as anyone gets good enough, they’ll go play somewhere else. Kevin Oquinn said Peace and good riddance.

While Mudiay still sucks he’s working much harder on defense than he did in the past. Last year he just died on every screen and while he still doesn’t do a great job avoiding screens a la Frank he’s generally done a good job hustling to get into the play. He’s had a bunch of deflections/ forced turnovers. And, of course, a few really bad fouls too. Still think he winds up in Europe next year.

Distraction/Defense #2: I sat behind Bernard King on a plane to SF few years ago when he was headed to a GSW ceremony congratulating him on the HOF. He humored me for at least two hours told dozens of stories and was incredibly gracious throughout.

The Knicks bottomed out to get Porzingis and have gotten worse each year since.

The Knicks “bottomed out to get Porzingis” by locking down their most valuable trade asset to a Mega Max extension along with a no trade clause and trading their second most valuable trade asset for Jose Calderon and Samuel Dalembart. In other words, they did not bottom out to get Porzingis, Phil Jackson just misunderstood how shitty the team was and then, when they were 5-35, he then started dealing away players (when they were already 5-35!) and then as soon as he could, he filled the team up with short term veterans and then signed a bunch of long-term free agents and traded for Derrick Rose.

The Knicks have tried “bottoming out” for one season – this one. And they’re already planning on signing a max free agent as soon as next season!

it’s true that for only this season has it been the Knicks stated goal to completely rebuild. But even without trying to totally rebuild, they did somewhat rebuild through the draft anyway, because they were so bad anyway. So it’s not totally unreasonable to think they might be at the right stage to go after free agents next summer. Their timing sucks, however. There is going to be so much money chasing free agents in 2019, that it’s hard to imagine they will get a good deal, and they could easily blow their wad and not actually get anyone very helpful.